Kukla's Korner Hockey

- If Phil Kessel wants to continue playing with the Leafs — and all indications are he does — it shouldn’t be all that complicated getting him signed. Assuming he plays at his usual close to point-a-game level, Kessel will fall in somewhere below Corey Perry’s $8.6 million a year and probably close to the $8.2 million Ryan Getzlaf is earning with the Anaheim Ducks

- Six teams have started training camp over the salary cap: Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, San Jose, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. All will have to be at cap or below when the season begins.

- It’s amazing, really. If you’re following training camps around the NHL, everybody is having a good camp, every team looks great and every player will bounce back from their off-season of a year ago.

Comments

He’s still relatively young, is ridiculously consistent, and definitely has a 50 goal season in him if he can put the pieces together. He’s also improving defensively, is a team player, and has risen above some crazy adversity both on and off the ice in his career. He showed in the Bruins series last year that not only could he be clutch, but he could shake that Beantown monkey off his back in the most clutch of moments.

There are very few players in the League that bring what Phil does these days, but the Toronto media would normally have you believe otherwise. He’s an $8 million guy IMO.

Kessel is a very good offensive player. As the #1 forward on the team making the most money, there are some big problems.

He’s not a huge step up offensively over a bunch of other guys who are making 1-3+ mil a year less than this 8 mil number being tossed around.

For instance, over the last 5 years Kessel has 155 goals and 158 assists in 352 games.

This other player has 130 goals and 177 assists in 373 games.

The other player has missed 21 fewer games and produces slightly less on a ppg basis, but pretty much the same in terms of raw production. His name is Loui Eriksson and he makes half what Kessel would.

So sure, I suppose the case can be made that in a vacuum Kessel should be making 8 mil. It’s just that whoever pays him 8 mil is never going to be a very tough team to beat… not when there are a bunch of other teams out there paying the Loui Eriksson’s of the NHL 3+ mil less to get 95% of what Kessel provides.

Big problem with your argument. The deal Eriksson is currently on was signed when he was an RFA, so he had considerable less leverage. The deal Kessel will be signing next, the one with that potential $8M+ salary, will be UFA. If you actually want to compare apples to apples? Look at the contracts those 2 signed as RFA’s. Eriksson’s deal was $4.25M and Kessel’s was $5.4M. Not quite double, is it?

If Eriksson was up for signing a UFA contract in the next year or 2, he’s most certainly get around $7M, with the reason he wouldn’t get the same as Kessel being their comparative goal scoring numbers. Scoring 0.44G/game gets you more than scoring 0.35G/game when points per game are pretty much equal.

Posted by
John W.
from a bubble wrap cocoon on 09/15/13 at 10:54 AM ET

This is a bit apples to oranges. Eriksson’s a fine player who does just about everything the right way,, but he’s not in Kessel’s league. He’s a complementary player. He’s not the type that you could put out there with two random guys and expect production.

Kessel has demonstrated that you can just throw him on a line with whomever and he will still produce. Eriksson can’t do that.

The deal Eriksson is currently on was signed when he was an RFA, so he had considerable less leverage.

True. This is why you trade Kessels for… players playing under deals signed when they were RFAs who had considerably less leverage. Paying top dollar UFA prices for players is a management structure that’s easy to explain to fans, but tends to lead towards struggling franchises, which is harder to explain to fans.

Dude, it’s hard to take you very seriously when you try and describe a comparison between two players as hating on everyone.

Larry was obviously referring to Steve Simmons there. Seems pretty obvious, just as it seems obvious that Kessel and Eriksson aren’t exactly comparables. All you need to do is look at what Stamkos and Tavares will make this year cap-hit wise to see how flawed your argument is.

Dude, it’s hard to take you very seriously when you try and describe a comparison between two players as hating on everyone.

Click the article next time instead of just jumping to the comments section.

Larry was obviously referring to Steve Simmons there. Seems pretty obvious, just as it seems obvious that Kessel and Eriksson aren’t exactly comparables. All you need to do is look at what Stamkos and Tavares will make this year cap-hit wise to see how flawed your argument is.

Last year Kessel played 16:27/ 3:26/ 0:01, es/pp/sh.
Last year Loui played 15:14/ 3:14 / 1:37.

That’s not a recent development, either. Kessel’s been a nonentity on the pk for 3 years.

This is an argument for why Eriksson is a well-rounded player, which I at no point took issue with. It’s not really relevant to the question of complimentary, though. Many well-rounded players (Eriksson, Sharp, Kunitz) are complimentary pieces.

Kessel’s a guy who drives the offense. He’s a player who makes his line “go.” Take a look at Lupul’s production with and without Kessel over his career. It nearly doubles with Kessel on the ice, while Kessel’s goal production goes up a tiny bit with Lupul vs without. Kessel’s making the guy.

Players that can do what Kessel does are rarer and more important than players like Eriksson, who produce with good players (with Benn or Richards, he was a 70 point player, but on a different line, he dropped to be a 45 point player), but are not the type of guy you can construct an offense around.

This is why a guy like Kessel will always make more money than a Sharp or Eriksson on every contract of the same type (RFA v RFA, UFA v UFA) he signs until he the day he washes up.